The “Sects, Lies, and Twin Peaks” Edition

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How did you guys get into Twin Peaks? What was the entree for that? I'm old enough that I actually watched it and its original run when I was in junior high. It was just a TV show. I'm kind of jealous. I like a cultural icon. I actually saw an episode when I was, I think I was like four or five at the time. But I remember seeing it like because my friend's parents let us stay up to watch it and found it utterly beguiling and completely terrifying. I think it was like the second episode where they're really just following, you know, Josie around and like introducing all the different characters because I remember her very specifically for some reason. And that's it. And I was like, and then later, you know, 20 years later became my favorite show. I mean, I was in eighth grade. I'm pretty sure Aubrey Horn was my first crush. My first, like, fictional character crush, which now that I verbalize it, I'm not sure how healthy that is as a general matter, but. I wouldn't advertise that too much, especially not on a podcast. Thankfully, we're amongst friends here. I will say I had a good friend of mine before the revival showtime when I moved to the Middle East in 2005 or six, I think, like by myself, I was an intern at the State Department. A good friend of mine burned me the first two seasons of the original show on a DVD. And I watched it by myself, like in my weird embassy housing where I had like eight bedrooms to myself in a giant condominium. That was just for me because they just had way too much surplus housing. And in the middle of the night, I got to... when Heather Graham disappears into the Black Lodge. And then the DVD shut off. I called my friend and I screamed at him. Sorry, spoilers alert for Twin Peak season two. By the way, I screamed and I'm like, dude, you forgot to put the end of the show on the disc. I'm not going to be home for four months. I can't believe you're doing this to me. And he wrote me back. I was like, oh, buddy, you're just learning how the rest of us have felt for the last 30 years. Scott, I can't believe you just admitted to piracy. Yeah, well, my friend did not me. It's fine. As far as I know. Hello everyone and welcome back to Rational Security, the podcast where we invite you to join members of the Lawfare team as we try to make sense of the week's big national security news stories. I am thrilled to have... Some of what I like to think of as our international crew back here to talk about global affairs. We tend to have kind of three stripes of rational security these days. We have the litigation and domestic national security stripe, the tech stripe, and the international affairs stripe. But this is the stripe that is closest to my heart. And I'm thrilled to have so many of my wonderful colleagues back to talk over a couple stories in the international arena that are percolating this week. And that might have some real long-term implications we want to get into. Joining us for this conversation is first one of our foreign policy editors, Dan Baiman of Georgetown and the Center for Strategic International Studies. Dan, thank you for joining us. Happy to be here, Scott. Thank you for having. Also joining us is Ari Tabatabai, our public service fellow here at Lawfare, one of our public service fellows, I should say. Ari, thank you for coming back on the podcast. Good to be with you.

And we are also joined by Michael Feinberg, our public service, first public service fellow alumnus, maybe. I guess maybe that was James, but second maybe. And now senior editor at Lawfare, Mike, thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. And thank you to the larger institution for keeping me on as a public service alumnus slash editorial staff member. We're just trying to burn through business cards on Mike. That's kind of the goal. So you get 500, you use two of them, throw them away, new jobs. I'll go for it. Regardless, we have a great set of folks to talk over the news because there's a lot of stuff happening on the international arena. So let's just go ahead and get into it. Topic one for this week, Beer Hall Pushback. Over the weekend, a raft of bipartisan U.S. and European officials headed to Bavaria for the annual Munich Security Conference. Last year, of course, Vice President JD Vance gave a real bar and burner of a speech, accusing European allies of restraining free speech and giving succor to the European far right. But this year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a somewhat more conciliatory set of remarks. that nonetheless signaled there were some fundamental changes happening in the relationship. For their part, European leaders mostly seem to be on board with that as they increasingly leaned into the public stance that it was time for the continent to stand on its own independent of the United States. Although how feasible that will be on what timeline remain the big questions. What should we make of the different remarks we heard from the conference and the broader messages the two sides are sending to each other? And is this a sign of an impending divorce or a different sort of shift in the U.S. European transatlantic relationship? Topic two, Real Talk. American and Iranian officials met again this week in Geneva to negotiate an end to the Islamic Republic's nuclear weapons program in exchange for an easing or elimination of U.S. sanctions on Iran. At least those are the kind of two ends of the demands that we're hearing from the two different sides. Negotiations took place amidst continued saber-addling by both President Trump and Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who threatened in a speech ahead of the talk to sink U.S. warships in the region if Iran came under attack again. Nonetheless, some participants in the negotiations, and particularly the mediators from Oman, seemed optimistic that the two sides were getting closer to some sort of common understanding about how they might move forward. But U.S. military assets have continued to move into the region, leading to what some believe is early signs that a military operation is yet on the horizon. Is there space for a deal? Are we going to say another war in Iran? On topic three, she who may not be named. A year in, the second Trump administration has not proven to be the China hawk that many expected. Far from drawing a hard line on all things China as the first Trump administration often seemed to do, U.S. officials have instead been surprisingly quiet and conciliatory in regards to China, at least outside the trade context. This has remained true even as reports have emerged of Xi Jinping, purging his military of non-loyalous, modernizing China's nuclear arsenal, and building more submarines, all steps with the potential to significantly upset the balance of power in Asia and beyond.

What is the real logic underlying the Trump administration's seemingly quixotic approach to China? And where might it lead the broader relationship between the two major powers? So for our first topic, let us dig into Munich and what we saw happen this past week. All right, let me turn to you because I know you were following developments there. This is one of those big events every year where more than, I think this is the premier ones really for the transatlantic relationship and particularly in the security space. You know, you also have Davos and other things that have more of an economic dimension. But this is the thing that people look to every year to really get a sense of the state of the transatlantic defense and security relationship. And this is maybe more than any other time, at least in my thinking, that the tenor of the conversation has seemed to change. Last year, we had one very vocal change, right, Vice President JD Vance. But the European messages, other than some incredulity regarding some of JD Vance's accusations in his remarks, seemed more or less on par was saying, hey, like, we should. maintain the status quo. This year, that's not the case. A lot of European leaders were really leaning into the message that we need to start going it alone. So talk to us about what you heard coming out of the conference and what stood out to you as particularly notable. Yeah, I think that after last year's comments by the vice president, basically the bar was so low that, you know, with Marco Rubio going in and kind of, you know, giving a speech where he was more polite than, you know, maybe the vice president was or the president can be toward European allies, you know, it was sort of seen, I think, especially in the United States, less so in Europe, as a... you know, as a departure, great, you know, things, we're back to kind of business as usual. And I'm not sure that that is how we're actually, what the discussion is in Europe following that. You know, I think the conversation in Europe is fundamentally shifting. And it is increasingly one, as you said, of, you know, Europe needs to become more self-reliant and needs to diversify away from the United States. That's true economically, technologically. politically, militarily, and intelligence-wise. And so, you know, a couple of nice speeches by Marco Rubio, by actually the other event that was going on also was the NATO Defense Ministerial, where Bridge Colby, the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, was representing, not the Secretary of Defense, which is noteworthy as well, on its own. But... He also gave a more normal speech about, you know, the importance of allies. And they both kind of stress, you know, we're not divorcing. We're not getting divorced from Europe. We're not getting divorced from allies. We just need to do more burden sharing and so on and so forth. I think all of that, though, discounts the fact that the fundamental challenge today is not about burden sharing or divergences on China policy. It is much more significant, much more fundamental than that.

You have European allies whose intelligence communities are increasingly putting out public assessments about the United States as a threat, not as an ally, not as a partner, not even as just unreliable as a threat. We've had... now weeks and weeks of conversations about whether or not we're going to be invading Greenland. And yeah, now that seems like it's behind us, but it's not in Europe, right? Like we have moved on from that conversation, it seems. But if you read European press, if you listen to European experts, that is still front of mind for them. Likewise with Canada and the whole conversation about the 51st state, we can come back to this, but the Canadians are, you know, they just put out this kind of... big national defense industry strategy. And they're increasingly talking about diversifying away from the United States. And then you have the piece where the administration has been asserting itself in domestic politics across Europe, often to kind of put its finger on the scale to help. frankly, fringe movements and parties and individuals in many countries there. So all of these things, I think, are viewed very acutely and felt very acutely in Europe. And that's not going to get fixed with a couple of speeches by Rich Colby and Marco Rubio. But it seems to me that there is a delta where in Washington, the conversation is kind of like, great, we're kind of back to normal. You know, now we're just talking about policy differences and burden sharing. Whereas I think the discussion in Europe is very different from that. think the sooner we kind of catch up with that fact, the sooner we can start to prepare for what comes next, as opposed to kind of waiting for the next crisis, whether it's over Greenland or something else, because there will be a next crisis to kind of force us to have that conversation again. So let me chime in on something Ari said, Scott, which is... This idea of comparing the speeches, right? So comparing what JD Vance said, what Pete Hegseth has said, with what Marco Rubio has said. I think we have to recognize the kind of staggering events in the transit-like relationship that have happened in the intervening year. So when Munich happens last year, there's a genuine question which is, what is this new administration? Is it going to continue Biden policies in some ways? Is it Trump won? And then there's, oh my God. It's in another realm. This is far worse than even many pessimistic people were expecting. So now the bar is so much lower in terms of what is expected of the United States. And so Marco Rubio can give a speech that if we had that happened seven or eight years ago, it would be a very challenging confrontational speech. But now it's much less so.

That's enough for us to say, yeah, we think it's going to be status quo. We calmed our senses. And this worked for the Europeans. I remember a conversation I had with Shashank Joshi, defense editor of The Economist in Aspen this past summer in August, I think July, I guess it was. At the time, he pointed out, like I've talked to a lot of European leaders. He's very tied into the European defense community. And he said, they're all feeling pretty good because it seems like the Trump administration's come around in Ukraine. They're not ditching them. That was the big concern for a long time. They've done some weird things around Ukraine, but net, they're seeming on board here. And they're saying enough of these conciliatory things that, yeah, okay, 5% defense spending stuff like that. It's a little bit of a bitter pill to swallow, but we'll come around on it. We get that. This reaction is wildly different. I really do think it comes back to a Dan said. Greenland was a seminal moment where the Europeans really completely shifted how they see this relationship. The UK may be slightly less than others, but even the UK, right? I think it got confused because people have coincided with Venezuela and people lump Venezuela and Maduro with us. I don't think the Europeans really care about Maduro. I just don't think they like will say we don't think this will comply with their national law, but it's not something they're going to fall on their swords over because he was a problem for many of them too, right? It is the Greenland case. They took really seriously. Maybe to the extent that like half of me suspects there was intelligence or other information they had that made them think that the Trump administration was much more serious about doing something aggressive because it just represents such a psychological flip. It's really extraordinary. I can't think of anything I've really seen that mirrors it. So there's another part of the conference that I think was really interesting. And that is the fact that the United States message was much more fractured because we had not just the Trump administration officials. We also had congressional delegation. I believe Gavin Newsom was there. A number of other people making remarks on the margins of this conference, specifically counter messaging the Trump administration. Dan, what do you make of that inclination? Like, what do we see? What is the impact of that? What message does that send Europeans good or bad? So it sends them a message of, you know, you can wait this out. That's at least one possibility. Whether they'll actually believe it is another question. And I'd also stress, as I already mentioned, you have military leaders nearby giving a much more traditional the U.S. and Europe will cooperate sort of message as well. And that does matter tremendously. So one kind of takeaway is, hey, Trump is a blip. But I don't think that one's going to go that. deep. It was one thing to do this in 2017 or 2018, right, that America had kind of a spasm and can come back to its senses. But this is the second time, right? And there's no question that the Trump tradition, if we want to call it that, call it MAGA, whatever you will, is now very much at the heart of American politics. And in the next election and the one after that and the one after that, there will be.

candidates who will be pushing some of these themes. And the Europeans have to ask, even if, you know, some, you know, Gavin Newsom type becomes U.S. president in a couple of years, what comes after that? So I think that the fractured message, you know, in part was intended to contrast with Trump. But I'm not sure it's going to be successful. And frankly, I'm not even sure it should be successful, right? Which is, it's very hard for any leader to speak on behalf of America's future when there's not a bipartisan consensus. And therefore, you know, foreign leaders, you know, mainways have to kind of fear the worst and plan accordingly. And I suspect that will be happening, although with less urgency, should there be a different administration. Mike, how about you? We had a conversation about some remarks that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made in particular, I think mostly related to China, if we can circle back to our third topic, that have gotten a lot of controversy. But it was kind of an interesting set of remarks. So Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was there with Jason Crow, representative from Colorado. They were presenting what they described as a working class view on foreign policy. It was in part counter messaging, you know, the Trump administration's kind of anti-globalist rhetoric, anti-transatlanticist sort of rhetoric. to some extent. But there's also a big element there saying, like, and by the way, this is a uniquely progressive vision that's still very grounded in the U.S. domestic economic needs and politics in a way that has more maybe parallels with certain aspects of the Trumpist worldview than, you know, a conventional commitment to transatlantic joint sort of security. What do you make of that? How does that fit into how you see the domestic politics kind of playing out around this? So I think there's one historical point and one contemporary point we can extrapolate from that. I'll start with the historical one. I may be dating myself here, but in the early 2000s, Walter Russell Mead came out with a book called Special Providence that attempted to delineate four strands of American foreign policy that had been present at various times. Each one was associated with a certain figure. Three of them were presidents. One was Alexander Hamilton. And they had differing degrees of isolationism versus engagement and monetary power versus military power. But what's interesting to me about the Munich conference this year is that this is the first time I can recall in my life where we see all of those visions. forwarded by different representatives from the same country. It's just odd. Normally, you have one, maybe two visions about America's role in the world presented by individuals from different parties. We had a lot at this conference. And... I think that speaks to, we can call it ideological diversity. We can call it ideological confusion. But I think both parties are very much groping for some sort of unified vision. There are no grand strategists yet.

who have come to the forefront of either party, that can really articulate a vision that is agreed upon by a majority or even a plurality of that party. And that leaves a lot of uncertainty if you're Europe, which gets to my second point, that if I'm a European intelligence agency, seeing that Trump has been reelected, I'm no longer engaged in what used to be called sort of Kremlinology. I'm not looking just at the characteristics of the leaders in American government. I'm looking... after his reelection in 2024, at a seismic shift among the American polity. And Dan talked about this in the sense of future leaders who will be Trump's intellectual progeny. But if I'm Europe, I'm realizing that something in at least some part of the United States has fundamentally changed. That even if leadership changes is going to constrain that leadership. And I think that explains why we are seeing such a visible shift, not in degrees, but of kind, in how Europe is talking about the United States. That's really interesting. I read it slightly differently, although I think it could arrive at a similar spot, which is that the transatlantic relationship has never been good, or at least it's not for several decades, been good at selling itself domestically in the United States, which is why you've had a consistent critical strain, particularly through... right-wing, you know, more conservative politics, but to some extent, an element to the left too. And that is in part because the transatlantic relationship was always seen as a bit of an elite project. It was this idea that, yeah, but the people actually do national security understand the importance of us and why it's there. And what I see this read this as is is more that, yeah, there's been this domestic gap here and maybe it's worse now than it is, there's facilitating element, but that the people in charge, at least at this given moment, and maybe people following his political tradition in the future, aren't part of that elite consensus that thinks that this is worth doing. I think they would expressly say we're not part of that elite consensus, right? They actually are actively trying to disrupt it. I think you end up at the same spot there, but it's almost trickier because in some ways, I think a big part of what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others are trying to signal is that this is not a big cultural change in the United States. This is a political outcome that is unique to a lot of factors, but is not a groundswell. I actually think that's true, right? Trump in the end won one election very narrowly, and a lot of people voted for him for reasons that were unrelated to mega and whatever that means. But I don't think that's what the Europeans care about. The Europeans care about that elite consensus, that this relationship was good for us, that Republican presidents, even as they were elected by Eurosceptic constituencies still stuck by.

Does that make sense to you, Ari? How do you think about this? Where does the domestic politics and the global politics intersect? And what lessons do Europeans have to take from this historical moment as they look to their own future security well beyond the window of a four-year U.S. electoral cycle? I agree with that. I do think that also, you know, and I think Dan kind of mentioned this in passing. I think it was hard to even make the case that we were going to be back to normal during the Biden administration. We heard this pretty frequently from, you know, counterparts when I was at the State Department or at DOD, where, you know, we would talk to them about various things and they would say, well, we don't know that this is going to stick in three years because we don't know what your politics is going to look like. And by the way, you can't really guarantee that the things you're doing today are going to continue. And so I don't think that the allies were fully sold on this notion of continuity even before this last election. And I think it's even harder to make that case today. And adding to that, you know, again, I think Dan Sullivan point was really spot on that, you know, there's this, and Mike mentioned this too, the values piece I think is really important, gets lost a lot in the kind of, you know, more part security conversations we're having and the political conversations we're having, which is that you have. You know, again, you have this fundamental shift. Mark Carney kind of said that pretty eloquently this past week between this divergence in the way this administration sees American values and the way many Europeans still see their values, right? Like, you know, when Marco Rubio talks about this notion of, you know, this common Western heritage, as Mike mentioned, he's talking about a very specific slice of that, whereas that's not how many Europeans see. their own values and their own kind of cultural legacy and historical and history. So, you know, I think that is a really hard sell to be making. And I don't think that, you know, I don't know that the administration was trying to do that. But if they were, they didn't really succeed to do it. It's fascinating. Well, speaking of complex shifts, international relationships and some, you know, far-off negotiations in exotic locales, let us turn our eyes a little bit to the east of Munich and a little bit to the south to... No, it's not Oman. Where did the last negotiations go? I started to say Oman, but that was the first round. That was the last round, Geneva. Still to the south and the east. I think I'm technically right in the direction. Just not quite the right to the same trajectory to Geneva. For our second topic, where we have seen another round of negotiations around Iran nuclear program. In a lot of ways, this is the Trump administration's effort to fill the gap left by the JCPOA and other arrangements that prior administrations that pursued. Of course, they ended in during the first Trump administration, but that the Biden administration did not really make a serious effort to re-engage. Let's make that not entirely fair, but to some extent made some effort to re-engage, but did not successfully do so. And we're now in this moment where the Iran nuclear program is again front and center, in part because U.S. military strikes that at the time the Trump administration trumpeted as eliminating that program do not appear to have been successful, at least to that same scale over this past summer. In exchange, Iran is making fairly strong demands about economic relief to the broad maximum sanctions that they have. We've been here before.

In particular, President Trump and many of people in his party, many people close to him in his foreign policy apparatus, were highly critical of the negotiations the way they went under the Obama administration. Do we have reason to think we may see a better deal that's more amenable to different parties here? Dan, let me start with you. And then, Ari, I want to come to you after that. I will say that Iran is in an exceptionally difficult spot right now. There are multiple crises. There is a tremendous political crisis with mass demonstrations being brutally suppressed that took a regime that already had legitimacy issues and greatly multiplied them. Part of the reason there were mass demonstrations was an ongoing economic crisis that has gotten even worse. And then there is a broader, I'm going to call it a security crisis, which is Iran went to war and lost decisively. There wasn't even the kind of symbolic we got one good punch in before we were left on the mat, right? It was a rather one-sided, humiliating defeat. And now, you know, this is the world's most powerful military, the United States, along with a very impressive military Israel. But that said, Iran has claimed it's been preparing for this for decades and did very poorly. The Iranian regime desperately needs something to move the country forward. And whether it's willing to make concessions on dramatic concessions on Richmond and proxies and so on, I think there's at least potential for real concessions here. And I'm very interested in what Arias to say. However, there are some real issues. One is a kind of timing question where the U.S., of course, already went to war with Iran last year and didn't really include a lot of this in the ceasefire deal, right? There was a moment of leverage there that was not used. And to tie them to demonstrations while somewhat emotionally appealing, the demonstrations are over. They were brutally put down. They're done. Now, perhaps they'll recur. But bombing, you know, various local security. facilities is not going to recreate and the demonstrations that allow the demonstrators to win. So there is a disjuncture between events on the ground and the threat use of military power. The last thing I want to say, though, is at least in my opinion, the possibility of a U.S. strike is extremely real. The United States is putting a lot of assets into the region. We're putting a lot of air defense into the region. We are putting a wide range of strike aircraft into the region as well as, of course, carrier groups. And we're also putting some of the less... kind of glamorous aspects of military forces that are vital, such as electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets. So there's a real package that is pretty massive and would allow sustained strikes for a long period of time that is being put into place. So I think it's quite possible, but the U.S. demands are exceptionally extensive. And one thing that I think...

we don't have a good sense of is the elite politics in Iran. You have a Supreme Leader who is, you know, declining in terms of, you know, simply being old and seems to be less hands-on. It's unclear who various power brokers are. There is presumably a kind of, you know, secret primary going on in terms of who's vying to be successors for key positions. And to compound all of this further, Iran has a counterintelligence problem, which is the penetration that Israel revealed of Iran's security apparatus was so massive that Iran has to redo a lot of its procedures. And even then, it's asked to always ask itself, are Israel and the United States listening to every conversation? Are they secretly present at every meeting? And even if that's grossly exaggerated. the fact that they have to worry about it is going to mess up decision-making. And so I think there's a tremendous weakness on the Iranian side and potential here, but it's a very difficult diplomatic dance. Ari, what about your thoughts on this? I mean, you've worked on these issues in government and outside of government. Talk to us a little bit, to the extent you can, obviously, about where you see the factors kind of aligning here in regard to a deal or a military strike and what comes next. I mean, I think Dan just put everything I would have said very elegantly, so I don't have a whole lot to add. I think I'm a bit skeptical that I agree with Dan that there are concessions that Iran could make, and now would be the time to make those concessions. I am not sure that I'm seeing a lot of seriousness in the negotiations right now. And part of the reason I say this is because, you know, having done the whole sunken dance of... in direct negotiations, they're not a real thing, right? They're a real thing in terms of kind of preparing the ground for future negotiations, et cetera, et cetera. If you want to actually negotiate on these very complex issues that are very technically challenging, which is on Iran's nuclear program, on sanctions relief, you need the two sides to actually sit down and talk to one another. We did this in the Biden administration. It was part of the reason it didn't really go anywhere. And to me, it signals that there is not a seriousness on behalf of regime decision makers, the supreme leader being kind of the chief among them. Because if they really wanted a deal, they've seen this before. They know that is not going to work. And they would be engaging in a different way. So that's part of it. My other concern, though, is that I'm actually, you know, to the point about timing. I don't think that this is a time for us to be negotiating with Iran. Dan described it really well. Like, you know, the weakness that the regime is facing internally and externally is tremendous. It is probably the worst kind of security, internal and external security landscape that the regime has faced since the 1980s, since Iran-Iraq war. And you know this because of what we've seen in terms of the degradation of the Iranian proxy architecture, the penetration into the nuclear program, the fact that they responded with just absolute brute force to the protests. You know that this is a regime that is feeling this challenge very acutely.

And so what we're doing here by negotiating at this particular point in time right after they stop massacring thousands, if not tens of thousands of people, is actually just kind of, you know, legitimizing this regime to some extent, right? And I think the second mistake, Scott, I think we talked about this last time we talked about Iran on the pod, there was a mistake that President Trump came out and said, I'm not going to engage with Iran until they stopped killing their people. And then... he started negotiating again. And he's also now siloing the nuclear issue from all the other problems. And look, in the past, I've been in favor of siloing the nuclear issue from other things because it is a very complicated issue set. You don't need to be negotiating on all the things at the same time. I think in this current environment and in this current moment, it is incredibly difficult and it sends a really bad signal to silo it completely from the human rights issue that is going on domestically. So... You know, I'm not sure that the negotiations are going anywhere anytime soon. That might be part of the reason why the buildup dead Dan was describing is occurring. Part of it might be a signal to Iran that, you know, the president is ready to actually go for a second round of strikes if Iran is not serious about the negotiations, which is what he's been saying rhetorically, but maybe kind of putting assets in place to really make that point more concretely, more practically. But part of it might be that there is information that we don't know, that, you know, is indicating that there are activities that are happening that we should be responding to. That's also a possibility. And it might also be that, you know, the administration is kind of acknowledging that there is not really that seriousness on behalf of Iran. And so it's preparing for a plan B, essentially. The last piece I'll say is. Part of my challenge with the administrations around policy right now is that it is really just kind of... flip-flopping between use of force and diplomacy. There are so many other things we could and should be doing. And it's not clear to me that we're actually doing those things, right? The spectrum of tools that we have at our disposal are not just go-strike facilities and engage Iran right after it kills, you know, many, many people. And in the first Trump administration, we had sort of the opposite problem where it was just sanctions and nothing else, really, for a long time until, of course, you know, we went and killed Soleimani. But now we're kind of doing the opposite thing where we have this binary choice instead of actually using all of the other tools that are at our disposal and that could actually yield results in a better way in this current moment than either the use of force or diplomacy. Can you give an example of one or two of the tools you're thinking of on that spectrum? I mean, sanctions being a really good one, right? Like, we're not really doing that much in terms of building up the sanctions infrastructure, for example. There's a lot of things we could do covertly that obviously I'm not going to get into, but there's a lot of different things that we could be doing on that spectrum that we're just not really doing in the same way.

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might simply be that now is the time to lend covert support to those in the country that want to destabilize things rather than doing it yourself. There are a lot of tools in the toolbox which are not public and are not sexy and therefore not attractive to the current administration, but which still can have very real positive effects for the United States. So, Scott, I want to jump in here and I think actually disagree a bit with both Ari and Michael. So I think the idea of trying out some covert action, you know, disinformation campaigns, so on, things that might shift things internally, certainly worth trying. But I do think it's right to negotiate in that let's try to figure out what we want, which has actually been a very difficult challenge for multiple U.S. administrations. And if it is this mix of ending the nuclear program, ending the missile program, and ending support for proxies, okay, you know, use this moment of considerable leverage to push very hard. Not on that list is support for democratic protest in Iran. And so if that is the goal, that actually takes you down a very different path. But if the goal of this administration, which frankly is similar to the goal of previous administrations, which is we just want Iran that behaves in a non-aggressive way, and if it's brutal at home, we will criticize that. But that's not going to be a priority. If that is true, then this is a moment of leverage to try to push. I'm not sure it will work, right? Negotiations often fail for 100 reasons, and both the politics in Iran and the United States are very complex on this. But I actually do think it's reasonable to push pretty hard. And I actually think not negotiating would be kind of sending an odd message, which is we're just going to bomb as we did last year and hope good things happen. in the aftermath of it. Scott, choose your camp. I think I agree with Dan, although I may take one issue and carve out my own territory a little bit, a little bit to, I don't know, the right or the left, up, down, somewhere to the side of Dan. You know, I tend to think negotiation is important. A lines of communication are there. I think there is a moment of extreme leverage here to accomplish long-term objectives that administrations have shared. Human rights issue of this is incredibly sympathetic. I do think it's important. I don't think it's a policy nullity and something that is, you know, anathetical or not in U.S. interests, strategic interests, but I also don't know how it weighs in. I think the other ones are pretty substantial strategic interests. And in some ways, I think it's easier to get to yes now than it might have been 10 years ago because Iran has revealed itself to be a bit of a paper tiger on a lot of the other fronts that you couldn't get them to negotiate with. I mean, Iran's proxy network has been substantially decimated. They're still there. You still got the Houthis, although in a lot of ways, the Houthis are some of the Iranians, like, less reliable partner, more effective, but less reliable. I think it's a good way to characterize it, at least in my understanding. You know, a lot of regional proxies have been severely constrained. Still got a lot of influence on Iraq, but even there, they're under a lot of pressure, and they're not able to bring to bear the same tools that they've brought to bear in the past, particularly financially. So you've got a real moment of leverage here. But I do think there's a cabin on the U.S. leverage in this point, and it's because they've already tipped their hand.

Twice now, we've seen the Trump administration stop short of regime change in Iran. when I had an opportunity and a justification that, frankly, I think most people would have bought to some extent. Did it last summer? Instead, what do we see them do? They hit the nuclear weapon program. Would they immediately do? They got Benjamin Netanyahu to stop the Israeli military campaign within days that people were worried was on the verge of pushing Iran over to pass the tipping point to some sort of regime change, right? They had started hitting military leaders or moving towards political leaders and reportedly considered targeting or did target economy. I can't remember which. Then we had this protest coming in where the United States was moving towards military action to the point that we saw, you know, all the day at Air Base, right, get non-essential personnel removed. That is the clearest indicator you will get, that in the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, that you're about to see military action against Iran. And then it stopped short because Iran made some like fairly superficial concessions. And then quickly we got the reporting, yeah, but. Israelis, Saudis, Emirates, the rare issue of consensus among all these different Middle Eastern parties is we're too afraid of what comes next to Iran. And so I do think that gives Iran some degree of leverage. But in my mind, that's the sort of calculus that actually leads to the point where you might get an outcome, like a negotiated outcome that every party can kind of swallow. Because Iran can give up a lot, but maybe has enough leverage. And the fact that the United States is going to be very reluctant to actually, I think, pull the trigger, or at least seems to be reluctant to pull the trigger on that sort of scenario of actually full-on military regime change, meaning they'll have enough concessions to get a couple of key points out of the Americans, and the Americans can't get everything they want, absolutely. Meanwhile, the Americans probably don't, reasonably don't care about as a lot of the stuff that... People criticized the JCPOA for back in the day. A lot of the regional stuff, this is at least not as big as security issue as it was before. The nuclear program is pushed back substantially, you know, does appear to have been damaged by the strikes last summer and getting more visibility and access to it would be valuable for future military action or anything else. So you can see this sort of a temporary solution. I mean, like, I actually kind of think I see the parts of the deal coming together here. particularly now that the protests have stopped and that the human rights abuses aren't going to be rubbed in the face of the Trump administration. And it's one also where I don't sure either party is going to see an advantage in waiting it out that long. Like it's going to take months. But if you talk about like a year or two from now, comedy and all them I think will be worried about like, well, What if there are leadership shifts and people begin to step? There's a Delci Rodriguez who steps forward and begins to say, oh, maybe I can do a better job of this, right? Or somebody else they can step into. Or maybe, you know, there's enough criticism, more protests that you see the like moderate-ish elected presidency and other people who have kind of powerless, but try and say, put themselves forward saying like, but we could be that sort of figurehead. For the Trump administration, it's that like, how long do you want to maintain this military posture? They did a lot in the Western Hemisphere.

It wasn't before an election. It wasn't looking like you're on the verge of starting another war in the Middle East. Like it's actually not, I think, a super cheap thing politically for them to just stay in this posture indefinitely. So I kind of see the parts of like what I could see is a deal coming together. I'm not sure it's going to happen. Like I said, that'd be foolish. But like I'm not as pessimistic about it as maybe it would other be. And not least because this president loves a deal. And the man. really doesn't have a lot of principles. In the end, he doesn't really care about that much about this stuff. And if he gets a win and a deal and gets to do what Biden and Obama can never accomplish six months before the election, I think it's be very tempting for him. I think we should note at least that... True to form, the two State Department alumni are optimistic about a negotiated solution and the DOD and IC alumni are not quite in kill them all territory, but we are urging covert action rather than discussions at a table. So do not come to rational security to see professional stereotypes shattered. We all have our priors. What can you say? Can I add to the stereotype here? Please. I'm actually concerned, Scott, to your point about you're not pessimistic that a deal will emerge, that actually gives me even less the warm and fuzzies than not having a deal emerge, partially because one, yes to your point, like having IA inspectors back into Iran, sure I can... Fine. Yeah. Great. Nice. I don't know that it would do the same thing for us as it would have done even two years ago, right? So I don't know that there are that many concessions that really would kind of shift the way I think about the Iranian nuclear threat today if they were to be made. That's number one. Number two. We do need to talk about personalities a little bit. You know, on the Iranian side, you have a foreign minister who's been involved in these negotiations for 10 plus years, for 15 years at this point. He knows this file inside out. On the U.S. side, we have Steve Wedkov, who is new to this, to all of it, and who's doing all the things everywhere, right? Like, he's basically the special envoy for global affairs at this point. Jared Kushner, apparently. And not a ton of folks who are left who have that continuity even at lower levels. Yeah, sure, there are still some folks who do, you know, who know the file fairly well, but a lot of those people who really had been there who had been instrumental in our understanding of the Iranian nuclear program of the negotiations that providing that continuity across Democratic and Republican administrations are gone. So that also makes me a little nervous that you have. basically this mismatch and continuity and knowledge of this file. And it just makes me worried that you're going to end up with a deal that, you know, these folks think is really great when actually maybe it's not. And maybe we would have had a shot at it a year and a half, two years ago. It would have been fine. But it just doesn't meet the moment today, given the advanced nature of Iran's nuclear program, even after the strikes that occurred over the summer.

It's a fair criticism. One thing I did not say, I did not say it was going to be a good deal. I just said, I'm not sure the pieces aren't lining up for some sort of deal. Well, having touched on Europe and the Middle East, let us turn to one of those other major strategic domains, and that, of course, is Asia. Or we have a topic that, frankly, we've almost talked about like four or five weeks in a row. We never really thought the piece of the line and it was time to blow the dust off and bring it to the fore. As there are a lot of little pieces that keep coming up in the news and everything else, but never quite jumps to the front of the news pages or the top of people's minds. Especially when you're only picking three topics from the day's news. And that, of course, is the question of China. There have been a lot of interesting stories about China recently, to say the least. You have confused remarks by IOC at Munich that are getting a lot of Criticism, you have similarly confused remarks by President Trump a few weeks ago, seeming to walk back a little bit of the soft security commitment to Taiwan. Security commitment's not quite right, but strategic ambiguity plus a little bit. Traditionally Iran, pardon, Taiwan has gotten from the United States. And then this past week, we've seen a number of stories from folks watching China about China. First, Xi Jinping taking steps to purge its military corps. to establish loyalists, kind of reinforce a hierarchy that follows his directive, including very high levels and down to lower levels. We've seen stories about them reinvigorating their nuclear program and expanding it, something that's being dovetailed a little bit with the end of the new start agreement and the talk about a new new start that would include China that the Trump administration, frankly, has been talking about since the end of the INF Treaty in 2018 and has not really made any progress towards, but who knows, maybe they will. And then also the mass manufacturing of submarines that China's engaging in expanding its submarine, something that has a huge strategic implications for a variety of reasons, that least that they can carry nuclear weapons. Normally, this would be a kind of period where all these little pieces, they never really rise to a crisis. And that's kind of China's secret, except for trade talks and kind of TikTok and a couple of these economic issues, China has almost never in the last few years really been the front page crisis that the Trump administration had to address. And instead, it's adopted a fairly conciliatory tone, I think it's fair to say. Whereas the first Trump administration was rabidly anti-China, President Trump used, you know, rhetoric against China and Chinese people that raised a lot of problems and concerns domestically as well as internationally. Now we're seeing this much more conciliatory tone. A lot of things seem to be secondary to the trade file and to some extent the critical minerals file, both areas where negotiations are ongoing on the former and the latter are an area where China has substantial leverage over the United States. You know, we are in this weird moment where China, where the Trump administration is nominally fairly hawkish on China, includes a lot of very real China hawks, is, you know, the head of a party that has historically been the far more hawkish party on China and far more defensive of Taiwan, dating all the way back to, you know, the Truman administration. And yet this administration is pivoting.

towards a less confrontational stance towards China in a way compared to even the Obama and Biden administrations. At least that's my read of it at the moment. So Mike, you are a close to China watch around this. Let me bring you into this conversation. Talk to us about how you make sense of this. What are you seeing in regards to how the Trump administration appears to be thinking of the China threat, if it is even a threat, and what that's translating into in terms of policy? So there's actually quite a bit to unpack in your intro to the subject. Because your description of our relationship with China or the way we view China being a series of small events that never fully lead up to a crisis or inflection point. sort of forms the backbone of the complaint that sinologists or China hands, what have you, within the U.S. government have always had, which is that... The nation being China, the PRC is always taking steps that strategically disadvantage the United States, but never do so in so confrontational a way as to push the moment to its crisis. And as a result, they are content rather than taking... you know, a giant leap to help their strategy to just take a half step every couple of years. And they get to the same point, but they do it in a way that there's no way to respond without seeming disproportional. You know, for example, the building of artificial islands during the Obama administration is sort of the best example of this. Was it something that could be militarized? Yes. Was it something that would definitely push the U.S. military further out of the first island chain? Absolutely. Was it overtly confrontational? Not at the time. And as a result, the Obama administration, understandably, really struggled with how to respond to it. And at the end of the day, there really wasn't much of a response. And it's not going to become a crisis until and unless there is an actual military conflict. And I think the building of the submarines is another step in that direction. Because with the August agreement, it is hard for us to say with a straight face that there should be an undersea warfare limitation between great powers. And China has always wanted a blue water navy. It is something they have always built toward. And now they're taking a major step to that, if they're not already there, that we don't really have a seemingly objective way to push back on. And, you know, ditto with the nuclear tests.

It's not a secret. I think we talked about it as a group the last time we were on rational security. Non-proliferation is not really a priority of this administration. And the way that it is devaluing allies means that the U.S. nuclear umbrella is much less of a security guarantee than it used to be. Now, China is never protected by that umbrella, but... If we on the world stage are willing to sort of stand by while other nations ramp up their development and production of nuclear weapons, again, it's hard for us to advocate against China doing so. When you fold into that, the... And I'm not saying this even in a derogatory way, because there are situations where it could be okay. But the largely transactional nature of U.S. foreign policy under Trump means that we are going to for, or are going to be willing to forego military capability or military supremacy in order for economic advantage means that even if we had the moral authority or the seeming objectivity. to push back on events like these, I don't know that we would. All of which is a really long-winded way of saying, I think we have one of the least hawkish administrations when it comes to China in the past two and a half decades. The best indicia of this was that a U.S. President explicitly said to Xi Jinping, Taiwan is in your backyard. That's really your own problem to solve. That is, I would say that's more than walking back strategic ambiguity. I see it's entirely abandoning it and it's abandoning it in a way that is not going to comfort any of our allies whatsoever. And the real irony is that for an administration that seems to be so focused on economic gains, allowing China to take over Taiwan would be economically deleterious. If China takes over Taiwan and they get the TSM chip factories that are there, the effect on the world economy and consumer production worldwide is going to be unlike anything we've ever seen in our lifetimes. And if China is allowed to dominate the South China Sea, an area where I think something like 70% of the world's commercial shipping takes place, that's going to enable China to enact a economic protectionist regime that is really going to disadvantage the United States economically as well. So I think we are looking at a China policy that is not only not hawkish, but is quite frankly unwilling to look at any consequences beyond the immediate next deal. There's just, as somebody who works China for his whole career, this is really disheartening because we seem to be pursuing policies that do not care whatsoever, not just about

second and third order consequences, but even about first order consequences that are not in the immediate term. All right, let me turn it over to you. What is your perspective on that? I mean, I'll just say, I think that accounting makes a lot of sense to me. And we see it because the administration has more or less said it in its national security strategy. Like a national security strategy basically said our biggest issue with China is a balance of payments imbalance that we need to correct. Yeah, we got a couple of bilateral issues, reliance on Taiwan for chip manufacturing. We're going to onshore that. But it's a vision that obviously a lot of the administration don't share, right? We know we have Elbridge Colby who is like the China Hawk of all China Hawks to the point that he wants to, you know. drop European security commends to focus on China. We have Marco Rubio, who's like a more conventional conservative China hot historically. And even though he doesn't sound like that now, he did just say at Munich, yeah, we can't defend Europe because we have to pivot into Pacific about China. That's still a very real strain of the Republican Party, including plenty of people in this administration. So how do we make sense of it? Like is this just Trump channeling whoever wrote the national security strategy, whoever's got his ear, the people at the NSC, people at policy planning at state? Or is this? really reflecting like a more monumental shift in the perspective of the people at the top. Brilliant question. I don't know the answer there. I agree with everything Mike said. I do think that, you know, we have a situation where China's growing its capabilities basically across the board, right? Maritime Navy-wise, nuclear-wise, et cetera, et cetera. And meanwhile, we have an administration that not only has kind of deprioritized China, it feels like it's kind of now behind land America, obviously. the Middle East again, even though for now over a decade administration after administration, Republicans, Democrats, including the first Trump administration, said that they wanted to deprioritize the Middle East and focus more on the Indo-Pacific and China specifically. And by the way, fighting with allies over all kinds of things. So, you know, I do think you're right. This is we're seeing the national security strategy. and the priorities that set out really clearly play out. I don't know what to make of a Marco Rubio or of a Bridge Colby whose entire Reson Dech for so long in terms of foreign policy was to focus on the Indo-Pacific and on China and how they go to work every day, thinking to themselves, well, I'm doing all these other things that I didn't think I wanted to do and I don't think we should be doing and not doing the thing that I think we should actually be doing. But I do think that all of that means that we are really missing a strategic opportunity to be focusing on this issue set. I think we should be focusing on this issue set. And instead, kind of seemingly going back to the same challenges.

policies of, you know, a decade, decade and a half ago. I think the nuclear piece is really important. Mike kind of brought it brought it up a little bit. Just I think it was this past week. The State Department came out and said that, you know, we have reason to believe that in 2020, China conducted a nuclear test. Now, there are some questions surrounding that. There is an organization in Norway and the CTBTTO that kind of came out and said, well, you know, maybe. So there are questions there. But nonetheless, we know that China has been building its nuclear capabilities for years. It's been building out its arsenal. There's been some conversations about including them in some sort of arms control arrangements with the Russians, but we don't even have arms control arrangements with the Russians anymore, as you mentioned, Scott. And I don't know that that sort of trilateral format that, you know, has been discussed as really possible, realistic. I have zero indication, although I don't know that the Chinese are particularly interested in engaging in a trilateral format. Maybe, Mike, or you have ideas there. So, you know, I think barring something like a arms control arrangement or some sort of massive change internally within China domestically, which I don't see happening, you're going to see the increase in their capabilities, the depth and breadth of their capabilities. They're going to continue their modernization. We can maybe talk about the purges, and I would. kick that question over to Mike to opine on that. But, you know, there is questions there on readiness and the future of the PLA that are important to think about. But I do think that we're essentially seeding the ground to China at this point and allowing them to continue doing what they're doing while we're kind of busy, you know, fighting about whatever it is with the euros. And by the way, signaling to Indo-Pacific allies. that we are not going to be reliable partners in the future, right? If we can't even be reliable with our closest allies, what reason do Taiwan or South Korea or Japan have to believe that we would be there to follow through on the commitments that we have to them? Yeah, it's a really, you know, just interesting shift. I mean, it is a sign of the mercurial nature of our president. And the extent to which the people around him have shifted so dramatically since the first Trump administration in ways that are hard to read. Like the internal terrain of the decision-making apparatus seems to be driving like half the policy decisions. And half of it is, which varies a lot depending on the issue set and what comes through. And half of it is Trump himself, who... does personally, like his comments as Xi Jinping really does suggest to me that he's actually bought into this spheres of influence-ish sort of worldview that's reflected in the national security strategy, which is not what I thought. I mean, when I read it, I assumed this was, you know, a couple of the Claremont Institute folks, Michael Aanton and other folks who were involved in drafting it and have always kind of had this sort of eclectic view and it did an effort to kind of

be a bricolure about that and like other intellectual threads within the kind of broader mega movement but you know Trump seems to bought into or at least that part of it or maybe that's just his rhetorical way to approach this thing it's just really really hard to tell but It does mean just kind of attrition at a certain point. If you don't have a proactive examination of these sorts of issues, and if all the other priorities are being made secondary purely to the economic relationship, I think maybe this is being justified in part off of the idea that everyone's going to get so rich over off of AI that there's not going to be a reason to have these sorts of attention anymore. But that seems wildly optimistic. But that does seem to be the way that direction of the administration is kind of leaning in regards to these things these days. I've got a couple points to make all of which are variations on the theme that the Trump administration is not, nor has it ever been particularly hawkish on China. There is a lot of blaviating rhetoric, and there has been since 2016, against China from Trump, because as the nation that provides low-cost production for American companies, it is an easy punching bag for him to faint at and score domestic points without having to really follow through with any actual economic consequences. But, like... I really struggle outside of a few prosecutions that the first Trump administration's Justice Department engaged in. Like, I really struggle to think back. to the years between 2016 and 2020, and find a U.S. policy that was like materially tougher on China than anything that came out during the Obama years or during the W. Bush years. There just wasn't a there there. And as for the people that Trump is surrounding himself with, you guys particularly mentioned Marco Rubio and Colby, color me a little bit skeptical. I think it is, I will do this in as undisperaging a way as possible. But Marco Rubio has always possessed, let us say, a protean political nature. And there are many examples involving national security incidents where he was very hawkish when it would behoove his future career to be hawkish. And then he would walk back, if not explicitly repudiate those positions when doing so would also behoove his future career.

He chaired the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it wrote a multi-volume, devastatingly detailed account of Russian interference in the 2016 election. I would humbly suggest that since then, he has chosen to surround himself by people who have a slightly different view about the effects of Russian interference. to the point where he is in an administration that now denies it never happened at all. And there were a number of occurrences during the first Trump administration where the administration, I'm just going to be blunt, took actions that were very friendly to the Chinese government. And he was in a position on Sissy where he could have spoken up and did not. I'm thinking in particular of like the Huawei investigation always gets a lot of press. And I'm not going to get into that. But there was a previous investigation and prosecution and type of settlement agreement with another major Chinese ICT manufacturer ZTE. And ZTE was under a crippling monitorship. that really limited its ability to function as a threat to U.S. national security and critical infrastructure. That monitorship was lifted roughly contemporaneously with an agreement with China to buy excess soybeans from a number of swing states in the American heartland. Listeners can draw their own conclusions, but I don't recall Marco Rubio raising a peep about that. So I'm just not quite sure that hawkish news on China is as baked into his personality as he would like be able to believe. As for Bridge Colby, you know, it's funny. He was the one appointee to the Defense Department in this administration that I'm like, all right, I can live with that. I can actually support that. His book, The Strategy of Denial, which is essentially a treatise on how the United States should go about preparing for a defensive Taiwan and carry out that defense if necessary. Like, it's not an easily dismissible book. It's a serious, there's serious thought put into it. But he's also chosen to work for Pete Hegseth, and to the extent that his name has appeared in news stories about things that have happened under his watch, like, he's coming off as kind of an amateur and a clown, taking major actions about weapon sales, for example, and curtailing them without getting Sec Def's authority to do so. Like... So while I think his heart is in the right place, I don't know if he's a seasoned enough government operator or bureaucratic infighter to really push his ideas forward. And I don't know that his presence there is enough to really sway any policy toward Taiwan.

Well, it is a set of issues. We will keep watching at Rational Security, but we are out of time for today. That said, this would not be Rational Security if we did not leave you with some object lessons to ponder over in the week to come. Dan Biman had to leave us for that last segment, but he recorded his object lesson earlier. Let's hear that from Dan. I think my role in object lessons on this podcast is to bring up different games. And one I want to highlight that I played recently is a game that came out several years ago. called John Company about the British East India Company. It's a wonderful dysfunctional game about a dysfunctional company. Basically, you play different families that own parts of the company. The goal of your family is to advance socially by buying elite properties and otherwise gaining social status. And to do that, you might have to invade a different part of India. or otherwise wreak havoc with the lives of millions of people in a faraway part of the world. And it's a kind of hostile bargaining game that is great fun. You'll end up hating your friends. But other than that, it's really worthwhile. So I commend it to all people. Oh, I'm excited off to check this out. I like near zero-sum bargaining games. Like not quite there, but highly competitive. You cannot win by yourself, but at the same time, there was a one winner. Wonderful, a wonderful recommendation. Excellent. All right. Ari, what did you bring for us today? All right. For the context of our listeners, every time I bring up movies on this show, Mike Feinberg and I get into an argument afterwards. We largely agree on policy issues, but when it comes to movies, except for maybe two directors and two directors, we largely disagree. So this time, instead of doing a movie, I am going to talk about theater. And just a couple of weeks ago was Broadway Week in New York. And so I went up for Broadway Week and also Restaurant Week. And I got to see Death Becomes Her, which was just three hours of pure delight. It is such a fun show, incredible acting, fantastic staging, much... quirkier than the movie from the 1990s, I think it is, with Meryl Streep, much more queer. But highly recommend it. It's so fun, and everyone should go see it. Hey, wonderful. Well, for my object lesson, I'm going to go a little low brow. You go high and I go low. That is, I'm going to go ahead and plug what do we all need more of in our life, somebody who makes Instagram and TikTok videos of humor, which is not usually a medium. I really appreciate other than like dropout and occasional asset uncleaps. Like, I'm not really a big social media video consumer generally. But I go on Instagram to see, like, look at pictures of my friend's kids and stuff and things like that. And I get these things fed to me. And I'd say there's a couple.

They appear to be a Canadian couple that makes videos their names are Jess and Quinn that are so absurd and ridiculous and often John Cornyn, but in a very clever and self-forward way, that I find them absolutely entrancing. I ended up watching like a dozen of them. So check it out, Jess and Quinn there on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, all the things. They have some weirder YouTube videos, it seems, that are longer. I don't really know. I'm only endorsing the shorts at this point. That's all I've really checked out. A classic joke is a... multiple references to needing a crowbar and then walk into a bar that's being run by a small blackbird, which is ridiculous, unnecessary wordplay and absurd, but somehow they make it work in a way that I find quite funny. So I recommend you check it out if you have a particularly absurdist and pun-oriented sense of humor, which if you listen to the show and enjoy it, you very well might. With that, Mike, bring us home. What do you have for us this week? My object lesson is something I am not recommending people get, and my experience with it is going to explain why. As a relatively new father, I've been buying a lot of children's books, and I've been trying to be selective in the ones I get. And I found a series called Poetry for Kids, which is selected and abridged poems for children by famous poets. wanting to expose my son to the American canon. The first one I got was Robert Frost. I thought this was going to be great. I thought we would metaphorically, you know, stop by the woods during a snowy evening, travel down a road less taken. And I was a little shocked when the first poem I opened the book to was one entitled Out Out. whose title comes from Lady Macbeth's speech, Out Out Brief Candle, and the subject of the poem is watching somebody get sawed to death in a horrible sawmill accident. And... It's a beautiful poem. I can't recommend it enough, but it is not what I would necessarily recommend for a young child. So if you're looking for books to read your children poetry, maybe skip this particular entry. Fair call, fair call. I used to have a wonderful app. I think I endorsed in the podcast before the Poetry Foundation, which did like a great print magazine, had a great app that would randomly pull up poems based off certain like random parameters. I feel like this is before I had children is when I was using it like most avidly or like maybe I had very young children I was not yet reading to. But I think it had like a child friendly sort of filter. So maybe worth checking out. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I think I remember seeing that on there. So if you're desperate for a constant stream of pleasant poetry, including a little more avant-garde stuff and some classical stuff. That may be an alternative. Well, that brings us to the end of this week's episode. Rational Security is, of course, a production of lawfare. So be sure to visit lawfaremedia.org for our show page, for links to past episodes, for our written work and the written work of other lawfare contributors, and for information on lawfare's other phenomenal podcast series.

While you're at it, be sure to follow Lawfare on social media. Wherever you socialize your media, be sure to leave a rating or review where you might be listening and sign up to become a material supporter of Lawfarefare on Patreon for an ad-free version of this podcast and other special benefits. For more information, visit, lawfaremedia.org, slash, support, and our audio. Our audio and our music, as always, was performed by Sophia Yan, and we were once again edited by the wonderful Jen Pachia. On behalf of my guest, Dan, Ari, and Mike, I am Scott R. Anderson. We'll talk to you next week. Until then, goodbye. When everything is moving all at once, your workforce, your tech stack, your business, you don't need more tools. You need one solution. That's why Paylossity built a single platform to connect HR, finance, and IT with AI-driven insights and automated workflows that simplify the complex and power what's next. Because when everything comes together in one place, growth comes easy. Experience one place for all your HCM needs. Start now at palocity.com slash one.